


Searching the Ruins

by Quipxotic



Series: The Spy and the Time Lord [5]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Anger, Angst, Character Study, Ficlet, Friends to Enemies, Gen, Pre-Episode: s12e05: Fugitive of the Judoon, Present Tense, Spoilers for Episode: s12e01-02 Spyfall, Texting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-01
Updated: 2020-02-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:08:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22513765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quipxotic/pseuds/Quipxotic
Summary: The Doctor needs answers and the only one who can give them is her best enemy...But only if she can find him.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor & The Master (Dhawan)
Series: The Spy and the Time Lord [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1600243
Comments: 4
Kudos: 46





	Searching the Ruins

“I did it,” she texts slowly as she leans against the TARDIS console, “just as you knew I would the minute you mentioned it at the Eiffel Tower.” She closes her eyes a moment. She will probably regret what she’s doing soon, but she opens her eyes and continues typing regardless. “I visited home. I saw what you did, all the destruction. Assuming you weren’t lying about that being your work, I mean.” It’s meant as a taunt. If he’s out there and receiving her messages, she knows he won’t be able to resist commenting.

But her phone is silent. Wherever the Master is, he isn’t within her reach. She keeps texting anyway. If nothing else, it’s a means of venting her frustrations since she’s unable or unwilling to talk about this with her friends. 

“Typical. The one time I actually want to talk to you, you aren’t around.”

“Why,” she types, wishing she could scream it at him. “Why would you do this? I mean, it’s you and maybe that’s reason enough. You were never one to pass up a bit of chaos and carnage, but then why weren’t you happier about it? Because you didn’t seem happy to me, Master. You seemed,” she tilts her head to the side, searching for the right words, “broken. Distraught. That’s very not you.”

She steps away from the console with a sigh and walks to the steps to sit down. The Doctor leans back and stares into the darkness of the control room ceiling for several minutes before for returning to her phone.

“You did it to punish them, you said. For what? For lying? They are,” she pauses and corrects herself, “…they were the Time Lords. They lied all the time! What was the Time War except lies built upon lies? Rassilon? Lies. Zagreus? You guessed it.” The Doctor feels her anger rising again and closes her eyes, breathing deeply to calm herself. After a few moments, she continues. “So why now? How could anything you found out now be worse than everything they’ve done before? And what is this Timeless Child stuff all about?” 

She stares at the screen, but all she sees are her own words. No answers. No comfort. What had begun as a welcome release now seems sad and pointless. She turns off the phone and slips it into her pocket. 

The Doctor feels lonelier than she has in a long time. “Enough of that,” she says mostly to herself as she stands and goes back to the console. “Time to pick the others up.” The TARDIS makes a sound of relief and she pats the controls, a hint of a smile at the corners of her mouth. “I know, Old Girl. This has been hard for both of us.” 

She doesn’t text again for weeks. But every few days, when the others aren’t looking, she checks for messages that never show up. 

— —

The Doctor slams her hand on the console as the TARDIS burbles in distress. She stares at the instrument panel without actually seeing it, her vision clouded by frustration and rage. Barely registering the ache in her palm, she reaches into her pocket and pulls out her phone. She pushes the power button harder than necessary and impatiently shifts her weight from one foot to the other as she waits on it to turn on. 

“Where are you,” she texts him once she’s able. “You’ve had weeks to escape, but you’re still nowhere to be found.” Her grin is hard and shows more teeth than usual - a predator seeking prey. “What’s wrong, Master? Losing your touch? I thought no cell could hold you, but where are you now?”

It’s not a rhetorical question. She’s looked everywhere for him, sneaking off in her TARDIS to search while her friends are exploring new planets. But no matter where she goes or what tools she employs, she hasn’t found a trace of the other Time Lord anywhere in the universe. And she needs to find him. She’s tried to be patient, to distract herself and forget as she has in the past; she’s even succeeded for short periods of time. But eventually the image of the burning ruins of Gallifrey crowds out all other thoughts, crushing whatever joy she finds in exploration with her friends. 

It’s intolerable. She needs answers only the Master can provide, which makes his absence even more frustrating. When the Doctor handed him over to the Nazis in Paris, she knew he would escape. It’s what he does and one of the ways they are very much alike, even now. Put them in a trap or a prison or a puzzle and they’ll find or force a way out. The search for freedom is a core part of their personalities, one of the things that drove them to leave home the first time around. It was what they sought afterwards that separates them, both then and now. 

It has been a fundamental truth throughout all of her lives: the Master always escapes. So what’s different this time? 

“So this is it? The Time Lords, UNIT, the Daleks, the Eminence - none of them could contain you, but the Kasaavin have managed it? They don’t even have actual physical forms! They’re gateways to other dimensions with spies all across the universe, so you said. Don’t tell me you couldn’t work with that? It’s a ready-made escape plan!” 

It’s all true, but doubt rises in her chest as an idea she’s been trying to avoid stirs. Maybe this time she’s finally trapped him in a prison he’ll only be able to escape from with her help? She shakes her head, not yet desperate enough to consider that step. She doubts Graham, Yaz, and Ryan would ever forgive her if she took it. She’s not even sure she would be able to forgive herself.

She stares at the phone in her hand and wills him to text her back, but the screen is as blank as it has been every time she’s tried this. Maybe he’s lost his phone? Maybe it’s run out of power or been damaged? He could still be out there, hidden from her somehow. He’s done it before, she thinks, remembering Yana. 

The Doctor sighs and puts the phone on the console. Anything could be true, the only way to know for sure is to find him. Calmer now, she glides her fingers over the TARDIS’s controls and searches again. 

— —

“I liked him, you know.” The Doctor sits with her knees pulled up to her chest and her back to the console as she types into her phone. It feels safe, sitting like this - like being hugged by her TARDIS and sheltered from the universe outside. “O. I really, really liked him.” She leans her head back, picturing O in her imagination as she smiles regretfully. “Sweet, kind, and clever, with just enough cheek and sarcasm to make him interesting. He always knew what to say to cheer me up, was always available when I needed to talk, no matter what time of the day or night. He was always on my side.” Her smile fades. “Of course, now it makes sense because he was you. All those years we were friends and all the years we’ve been enemies, you had so much knowledge of me to pull from to create the perfect friend and confidant.” 

“You did a good job,” she concedes and finds the admission doesn’t hurt as much as she suspected it might. “I was completely fooled. Not a clue that he wasn’t exactly what he…you…said he was. It's your best acting job yet and you kept it up for years. That's impressive, really.” The Doctor scrunches her face, considering. “You didn’t have to do that, keep playing the game for all that time. It’s unlike you to wait that long for a payoff, which makes me wonder: was any of it real? Did you ever forget you were playing a role…even just a little bit? Were we actually friends again in some small way? How much of him was you?”

She wipes her eyes and blinks. She’s tired, more bone tired than she’s been in ages. That’s probably why she’s making herself vulnerable like this; that and she’s given up on him answering. This is her speaking to herself now, just in text form. 

“I miss him. Especially now, when I have so much I need to talk through. I wonder what he would say about Gallifrey’s destruction, if he were real?” She tries to picture it and fails. It’s a pointless exercise anyway - O doesn’t exist and she has actual friends she could tell, if she dared. She’s not sure why she holds back. Maybe saying it out loud to them would make the fate of her home feel more true somehow? Maybe she worries she wouldn’t be able to hide her anger from them? Although honestly, it’s been slipping through more and more in her interactions with them lately. Sooner or later it’ll burst free and they’ll see her as she really is: the Oncoming Storm. She'll drive them away, it's happened before.

She shakes herself, refusing to give in to those sorts of defeatist thoughts. She’ll sort this out because that is what she does. 

“I will find you, you know,” she texts as she stands. “No matter where you are, no matter what dimensions you hide out in, I will find you, Master. It’s only a matter of time.” She slots the phone into a panel of the TARDIS console to charge it and pilots her ship to the last place she wants to visit: Gallifrey.

The Doctor steps out into the ruins of her home world and closes the door to her TARDIS behind her. On the console, the screen of her phone lights up, displaying two lines of text that glow on its surface for an instant. 

_“Soon, love. I’ll see you very soon.”_

_“We have so much to talk about.”_

The screen goes dark again, the messages a secret she will discover far too late to do her any good.


End file.
